Share the Sweetness in 2024: How To Find and Nurture a Baking Community in the Coming Year

Baking is a fun activity, but one that's greatly enhanced when you have like minded people to share it with. Here’s how you can find an enriching community.

Baking is a fun activity—from collecting all the ingredients and equipment, to combining all of them in the right way; and from creatively decorating the dish to seeing the batter solidify into a dessert in the oven. But perhaps the most satisfying part of the process is sharing your creation with loved ones, coming together over food and creating memories. The same way a writer finds joy in people reading their work, a baker is happy when people eat their creations. But while the loved ones can offer appreciation, they’re often not going to critique your dessert and break it down to offer detailed feedback. When it comes to approaching baking in a studied manner, one needs a community of bakers around them.

The big question is, how to find bakers and build a community?

For one, it’s always a good idea to keep in touch with fellow bakers in your personal circle. This could be a friend, family or colleague. It could be someone who’s new to baking, or has been at it for several decades. The idea is, if someone bakes, you want to build a connection with them. Looking at our own network and pool of contacts is a great first step toward finding yourself baking friends. From here, it's easier to find more people to connect with, based on the fellow baker’s network. With this person or people, start by sharing your baked goods with each other. Discuss technique, baking experience and experiments. Understand what baking means to them, what place it holds in their life, and how they approach it. Once your friendship is a bit stronger, invite them over so you all can bake together.

But let’s assume, you haven't been able to find anyone through your contacts with an interest in baking. What to do then?

We suggest you start online. Look for baking communities on the Internet through various websites where it's discussed. Find the blogs of bakers and reach out to them through email or social media. Once you’ve started building an online community, one person will lead to another. You’ll start talking about baking and learn from experienced bakers. Through social media, you’ll come in contact with other people who are also following that particular baker. We suggest you become active in the comments section and take part in the discussions happening on the page. Also, try to look for famous bakers from your own city. Sooner or later, they might talk about an on ground event related to baking. Go there and socialize.

Another great way of meeting like-minded people is by joining a short course or workshop about baking. Not only will you learn valuable skills, you’ll also meet fellow students. You can suggest the whole class grab a cup of coffee after the next class. That will make for a great bonding exercise. Essentially, the goal is to become comfortable enough with each other during the classes that both sides are motivated to stay in touch once it's over.

Once you've found a bunch of people interested in baking, and this could be online or offline, you want to be proactive about meeting. Organize a baking party at your home where everyone comes, bakes together and then enjoys the dish as well. Or suggest that the group can watch a movie or tv show marathon about baking or cooking.

Create a WhatsApp group to stay in touch and be active on it, even if you're just sending memes. Suggest that you’ll meet once a month to bake together and learn from each other. You can also organize Zoom meetings where each person bakes in their home while being logged into the meeting, so you'll all have each other as company.

Whether you congregate online or offline, the important thing is to consistently show up. Try to make such meetings part of your routine. And most importantly, be the one who leads the group and takes initiative if needed, instead of waiting for someone else to take on that role. Like with anything, finding community enriches the experience and it's a good idea to put in the required effort to make community happen. But don't fret. Give it time. And in the meantime, go forth and bake.